After hours of experimentation with different ingredients and techniques I think I have finally found the perfect recipe which encompasses the true Scottish feel in a glass - this is my Haggis Manhattan!

Burns Night is approaching once more and it's time to raise a glass to Scotland's greatest poet. If you're not usually one to get involved in this annual shindig, the 25th January is the time to don your kilt, get mashing those neeps and tatties and turn your attentions northwards.

I'm writing this in the very pub that I first experienced a real Burns supper. As a child, I'd seen the grown-ups drinking copious amounts of whisky, and heard my Dad trying to do justice to the words of Scotland's famous son - but it wasn't until I was 18 (well, a little younger, but let's not go there...) that I heard Robert Burns' words...

At Balliol College, we supposedly celebrated Burns Night because of 'our Scottish ancestry'. In reality, we celebrated Burns Night because of my English tutor, a charming raconteur with a penchant for interesting dinner parties and wistful poetry recitation, who enjoyed to its fullest extent Burns Night's potential to increase his undergraduates whiskey allowance...

The last two weeks in the world of has been pretty full on and I would say surprisingly enjoyable for what can often seem a bleak time of year. The snow has brought out the inner child in many a moaner and the blanket of White.

Burns Night is an occasion for us to not only celebrate the life of our favourite son, Robert Burns, but an opportunity to acknowledge, embrace and enjoy all things Scottish. For me, it can only be one thing: whisky.

There I was passing a shelf of specially-ordered Burns Night haggises at Waitrose in Canary Wharf when I overheard a woman speaking to her friend. "Any Scottish people I've known have always been really arrogant and loud," she said in an East End London accent. "Yeah. Big drinkers too," her friend nodded, picking up a haggis and eyeing it suspiciously.